From the course: Excel 2016: Advanced Formulas and Functions

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Exploring practical uses for the RAND and RANDBETWEEN functions

Exploring practical uses for the RAND and RANDBETWEEN functions

From the course: Excel 2016: Advanced Formulas and Functions

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Exploring practical uses for the RAND and RANDBETWEEN functions

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- Excel has two random number generating functions. One is called RAND widely used by mathematicians. Why would anybody else want to use this function? We've got a list here. Maybe periodically, just to check the accuracy of some of the information, we want to pull five records here at random. Right now the list is sorted by social security number. We might want to sort it in random order. So using an empty column to the right, or adding a column, let's simply enter the function rand. This function will generate a random number between zero and one and you need only type rand left parenthesis and complete the entry. Copy this down the column. If this is adjacent to data that we want to sort, just click in the column and, on the Data tab, you can click either A Z or Z A. The list is sorted. It's in no particular order whatsoever as we see it. We don't need that information anymore. By the way, when you use this function, if you make any other change in the worksheets suppose for…

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